filmdependent.com

It seems that 2007 is a year of many changes here. We have been busier than ever before with client work, if that was possible after 2006, when we thought that was as busy as we could get with client work. We have been growing our staff slowly, and are very happy to have Lydia Hoffman working with us now! Lydia is very involved in our document creation, editing and research. And Yuko, the office manager, has been trying to keep a handle on our systems, billing, along with crucial research and data corraling.

As well, we have been in a slow process (now accelerating) of aggregating all of our efforts under the brand name of FilmProfit(r). FilmProfit is a registered trademark that we own, and it seems that it has kind of embedded itself into the film community more deeply than big horse has. We are going to remain to be big horse, but we have now completed resolving all of the bighorse.com web pages to filmprofit.com.  We have also resolved a way to collect our newsletter signups. If you would like to signup, please go to www.filmprofit.com.

Likewise, over here at FilmDependent (which will continue to stand alone here), we have begun to aggregate everything into a blog, entering the blogosphere, sounds like floating off in a balloon. Maybe we are without knowing it. Hello, down there, can anybody hear us? The purpose of this is to make it easier to collect and post our thoughts about, well, whatever strikes our fancy, as long as it is learning about the industry.

And while we are starting to natter on about that, this appears to us to be a watershed year. There is a lot of going on out there about things like the long tail, maybe the short tail, and we have almost begun to enter a phase that could lead to a bubble mentality about digital delivery of content, if everybody is not careful. I just went through some bubbleheaded articles from 1999 and thereabouts talking about broadband taking over. Now, seven or eight years later, we have reached 50% broadband penetration in the US, and I just saw a report that 29% of the population plans to NEVER get online. We have 65% plus or minus cable households, with 30 million or the like with digital (VOD-capable). A long way to go there. There are still a lot of problems to solve, but I get ahead of myself. I plan to write about these things in the near future.

 We have had to do a lot of studying about this, and many of the other technological and industry goings on as we work for a varied list of clients, from distributors to production companies with slates, to individual projects.

More about all that later, but maybe you want to check out some of the stories and articles in the links to the right, here. Maybe you even want to go over and see what we have going on at www.filmprofit.com. Hope to talk with you again, soon, as we get our heads above water again.

Jeffrey Hardy

Sweet Land is now in theaters.

When we first read the script for Sweet Land and started working on the project in 2002, it was called Quiet Breathing. We liked the quiet and strong story, and we liked working with Ali and his cohorts in building their financing package, including providing our Markets Report, Comparable Pictures Reports (ROIs) and a Core Audience Analysis.

Now the film is out, and receiving very nice reviews. Check out the Sweet Land Review in Village Voice. Congratulations Ali and folks!

I am writing this in the last days of 2006, as we struggle to bring our web sites under control. With three main sites, www.filmprofit.com, www.bighorse.com and www.filmdependent.com, we feel that it will be easier to maintain, update, manage, and keep our information under control if we aggregate it all more closely under one roof, www.filmprofit.com, with our free publishing under www.filmdependent.com.

We are working on that now, and hope to welcome all of you who come in 2007 with a newer, easier and better site. Some of our more interesting older material will be incorporated right into this blog.

As well, we are trying to streamline how you can get to communicate with us, learn more about our services and products, and even transact with us.

More, we are hoping to begin a series of discussions by me on key issues in the film business, as they unfold. This will probably all fit under the rubric “What’s My Thru-Line?” my focus on the key elements that should drive producers’ business plans.

I hope to see you here often as we go forward, and try to keep this area fresh and meaningful in your own dependence on film…

Jeffrey Hardy

FilmDependent welcomes you to the birth of our blog! This is where we will be posting all of our newsletter content in the future:

The findings, analysis, and speculations that we come across, achieve and suffer, and then share with you.

this site is sponsored by FilmProfit(r), the business of successful films.